The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for packaging an object as defined in the preamble of claim 1 or as defined in the preamble of claim 13, Such a method and a corresponding apparatus are in particular used for packaging of stacks of goods which are arranged on a pallet and are to be transferred in any form or other. Due to the foil hood the stack of goods is protected against atmospheric exposure and is given increased stability.
In known methods and apparatuses for packaging objects, in a first treatment step a foil hose in desired length is supplied into a treatment room, is welded into a foil hood and the formed foil hood is cut off. Subsequently, the foil hood is opened and with the aid of grippers of the shrink frame is drawn over the object to be packaged. For shrinking the foil hood onto the object, the shrink frame including a heating means annularly enclosing the object to be packaged, thereafter is moved from the bottom range of the object further again in upward direction. Therein the heating means is switched on so that the foil hood is shrunk onto the object to be packaged under supply of heat.
This method and the corresponding apparatus are quite limited in capacity as the individual method steps are carried out subsequently such that the gripper means at first pulls the foil hood over the object completely before the shrink frame located in the bottom area of the object can start with the shrinking operation. Only after the shrinking operation the packed object is transferred further and the next unpacked object is moved into the apparatus. The cycle time of such a known apparatus, therefore, is comparatively long, this rendering it comparatively expensive in relation to the number of packed objects per unit time.
Furthermore, no particular shrinking quality is achieved. Finally, it is not guaranteed that the foil of already shrunk goods of the objects to be packaged does not glue together with the shrink foil. In order to avoid such pasting together, pressure blowers are proposed which blow up the foil hood in order that the latter does not directly bear on the object. The control of such blowers, however, is very expensive and there exists the danger that the foil hood due to too strong blowing up comes too close to the shrink frame and, therefore, due to too strong heating of the foil hood holes are burnt into the foil hood.